Group based at Swiss university unveils new low-energy, high-quality JPEG photo format

GENEVA, April 9 (Xinhua) -- An international group based in Switzerland said on Monday it has launched an advanced and expanded version of the JPEG image file format, a global system used to compress digital images.

It announced it has unveiled JPEG XS, a new format in which the image-compression process uses less energy, and higher-quality images can be sent over broadband networks such as 5G.

The Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) is an international committee headed by a university professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL).

JPEG XS will have applications in areas such as virtual reality, augmented reality, space imagery, self-driving cars and professional movie editing, said EPFL.

"For the first time in the history of image coding, we are compressing less to better preserve quality, and we are making the process faster while using less energy," said Professor Touradj Ebrahimi, who runs EPFL's Multimedia Signal Processing Group.

"This is a real paradigm shift," said Ebrahimi.

The compressed file ends up being larger but expanded broadband networks such as Wi-Fi and 5G can easily handle the transmission of them, said the EPFL statement.

"The aim is to stream the files instead of storing them in smartphones or other devices with limited memory."

The Joint Photographic Experts Group was behind the original JPEG file format that came out some 25 years ago.

JPEG compression has been widely popular as it typically reduces image file sizes by a factor of ten with the compression process developed so that images could be stored in cameras, with their limited memory, and easily shared over communication networks. Enditem